Hi, I’m Kelly.

I’m a millennial corporate dropout who left after 20 years in HR. I spent years inside HR and talent, watching brilliant people get passed over while the people who could talk about their work got the title. Since I left corporate, I’ve coached more than 800 people and taught them how to talk about what they’re great at without losing their humanity.

Cup of Ambition is honest career advice and tools that turn the work you actually do into language that gets you seen, paid, and promoted.

Ughhhhhh. In my opinion, the hardest move you can make is going from a peer to a leader and then leading the work of former peers.

When you were peers, it was all cool. Everyone shared power, you weren’t a threat, and there was no real skin in the game for anyone to feel like they were losing something.

But when the tables turn and you have to influence them to do work, things get sticky.

Let me be clear… You're not the problem, and the fact that you're sitting there asking if you are tells me you're exactly the kind of person this role needed.

So let me name what's actually happening, because this isn't a respect problem and it definitely isn't a you problem. You were handed authority with no buy-in, and those are two very different things.

"Everything flows through your department" sounds like power, but to everyone else it landed as a threat to their turf, handed down from above with your name on it. A mandate buys you compliance. The trust, and the willingness to actually loop you in, you have to earn, and you've had all of 2 months to do it.

And those words, competitive and controlling are what this world reaches for when a woman uses authority directly, the same mandate that gets a man called strategic and focused.

Work is based on power structures and dynamics, just like the world we live in. Those power structures are based on access to financial resources, just like the world we live in. When people feel threatened or like something in their power wheel is being taken away, they resist… just like the world we live in.

People won’t always like you, your role, or the system. And that’s ok, but it can’t come at the cost of your ability to succeed.

I feel like Kelis said it best in Bossy…

1. Lead with a win they want, not a chore they'll offload.

Influence with no authority gets built on results, not access, so don't ask to be looped into everything and don't open yourself up as free labor. Pick one visible priority each leader actually cares about, and offer your team to drive the part that's stuck. You're not asking for their busywork. You're solving a problem they already want solved.

That reframes you from tollbooth to the person who makes their priorities move, and it gives you an early, visible result you can point to with the next skeptic.

One guardrail worth saying out loud, since the "controlling" crowd will test it: pick the thing strategically. One high-visibility priority, scoped and owned by your team, not five vague favors. You're choosing where to plant a flag, not volunteering for everyone's leftovers.

2. Make your CEO do their half.

Your CEO decreed this and then left you to defend it alone, and a mandate only you defend isn't a mandate, it's a target. Go back, not with hurt feelings, but with the business risk, and ask them to actively sponsor it.

3. Name your intent before they assign you a worse one.

When the next "controlling" comment surfaces, don't defend and don't shrink. Get curious, say what you're actually going for out loud, and ask for it straight.

4. Let the friendships find their new shape.

The silence hurts, and some of it is grief you're allowed to feel. You had real relationships with people and to have that taken away is hard. It feels like betrayal.

For now, find the one or two who'll actually engage and build from there. The rest will find their way back on their own time, or they won't, and that's information too.

You worked hard for this seat and deserve to be there, but the room just hasn't caught up yet. From what you’ve shared, it doesn’t sound like you have a respect problem. You were highly respected pre-promotion, so this tells me that the issue is with the newness and others being forced to change the way they work.

You fix it the same way you'd earn anyone's trust, by making their lives easier until "controlling" stops fitting and they start coming to you on their own.

Besides all that, stand in your power and be the boss. The haters will quiet down when they see how easy you make it for them.

The gumption. Coaching Club is Live and we still have a few more seats left! I’d love to see you there.

You guys, we have to break up with corporate speak. We’re throwing around jargon word salad all over the place and then plugging it into AI and getting even cringier outputs.

Seasoned. Experienced. Collaborative. Hardworking. Dedicated. Strategic.

As the world becomes more entrenched in AI writing, it’s time to start to sound like YOU.

Not the corporate speak you, but you, you.

I asked Claude to create a mock up of a stereotypical corporate jargon driven profile, and she didn’t miss because it’s not far off from real life.

I’d venture to guess 70% of the profiles I see are like someone just sat down and spit out every broad generalization about their work at once.

Completed profile, yes.

Completely meaningless profile, also yes.

You can’t hide in jargon, you have to be clear. And there’s one simple way to do it…

Say it out loud.

Pretend you're across the table from a friend who doesn't do what you do, and they ask what you actually pulled off this year. Take any line straight off that profile up there. "Turning strategy into execution." You'd never say that to a friend. Out loud, it turns into:

That's real, and it's already a thousand times better. But most people stop right there, one step too early, because sounding like a human isn't the same as showing impact. "I get things done" is still describing the activity. So you ask the only question that actually matters. So what changed because I did it?

Clarity comes once you stop naming the broad category of your work and start naming what changed because you were in the room. That's the whole skill. Speaking to impact instead of speaking to activity through clear, simple language that describes you.

Tired of always talking about how much you hate your job anytime you hang out with friends or family?

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